"Thirty-five, sir."

"That'll do. Go to the cook and learn your duties."

And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude
to Wolf Larsen. He was stronger than I, that was all. But it was
very unreal at the time. It is no less unreal now that I look back
upon it. It will always be to me a monstrous, inconceivable thing,
a horrible nightmare.

"Hold on, don't go yet."

I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley.

"Johansen, call all hands. Now that we've everything cleaned up,
we'll have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless
lumber."

While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors,
under the captain's direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon
a hatch-cover. On either side the deck, against the rail and
bottoms up, were lashed a number of small boats. Several men
picked up the hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to
the lee side, and rested it on the boats, the feet pointing
overboard. To the feet was attached the sack of coal which the
cook had fetched.

I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-
inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at